predictable

the problem of procrastination and self-control
tions and incentives, wouldn't it make sense for us to select
the last date possible?"
"You can do that," I replied. "If you find that it makes
sense, by all means do it."
Under these conditions, what would you have done?
I promise to submit paper 1 on week
I promise to submit paper 2 on week
I promise to submit paper 3 on week
What deadlines did the students pick for themselves? A
perfectly rational student would follow Gaurav's advice and
set all the deadlines for the last day of class—after all, it was
always possible to submit papers earlier without a penalty, so
why take a chance and select an earlier deadline than needed?
Delaying the deadlines to the end was clearly the best deci­
sion if students were perfectly rational. But what if the stu­
dents are not rational? What if they succumb to temptation
and are prone to procrastination? What if they realize their
weakness? If the students are not rational, and they know it,
they could use the deadlines to force themselves to behave
better. They could set early deadlines and by doing so force
themselves to start working on the projects earlier in the se­
mester.
What did my students do? They used the scheduling tool I
provided them with and spaced the timing of their papers
across the whole semester. This is fine and good, as it sug­
gests that the students realize their problems with procrasti­
nation and that if given the right opportunities they try to
control themselves—but the main question is whether the
tool was indeed helpful in improving their grades. To find
out about this, we had to conduct other variations of the
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